Jakarta/Jambi – Haze from fires raging on the jungle-clad islands of Sumatra and Borneo thickened Thursday as officials met to prepare a plan for battling the blazes.

In Pontianak, the capital of Borneo's West Kalimantan province – which has also been badly hit by the haze – visibility at 7:00 am was only 100 meters, said Maroni, from the local meteorology office.

But it improved to more than 5,000 meters four hours later, he said. "We are in a meeting now to coordinate steps to fight the ground and forest fires and the resulting smoke," Ma'aruf, a coordinator of the environmental impact control agency for Riau province, told AFP.

Ma'aruf said the number of hot spots in Riau had fallen to 67 out of a total of 380 burning across Sumatra, with most of the fires in other provinces, particularly neighboring Jambi.

Visibility in Pekanbaru was down to around 1,000 meters at 7 a.m. but worsened to 800 meters for two hours before rising again to about 1,500 meters, said Ibnu, a meteorological official in Riau's capital of Pekanbaru. Flights from Pekanbaru's airport were unaffected, an official said.

Burhanuddin, of Riau's health office, told AFP that the department was monitoring air pollution across the district, which had not yet reached a dangerous level.

In Jambi, strong winds had helped clear the sky and improve visibility from 400 meters to two kilometers during the morning, said local meteorological official Tobing. However, Tobing said the wind could be carrying the haze to Riau and toward the Strait of Malacca.

More than 1,000 hectares of plantation areas in seven out of 10 regions in the province have been razed by fire.

Jambi's forest and land fire control center secretary Frans Tandipau said efforts had continued to stop the fires. He claimed hot spots in the province had declined from more than 300 Wednesday to only 155 on Thursday.

"We've successfully stopped the fire in the western areas," he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday, referring to four regencies – Bungo, Merangin, Sarolangun and Tebo. Malaysia, which has already been smothered in this year's haze, has demanded that Indonesia do more to tackle the annual problem. Singapore and Thailand have also been affected in recent years.

Earlier this week, officials said they would deploy hundreds of police and troops to fight the fires usually lit to clear land for crops. On the Indonesian portion of Borneo, a total of 171 hot spots were detected Wednesday.

The government has outlawed land clearing by fire but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.